Giants' Victor Cruz aiming to make progress in critical role at wide receiver

Tim Farrell/The Star-LedgerThe Giants' Victor Cruz makes a catch in the first half of Monday's 41-13 preseason victory over the Chicago Bears.

Thanks to ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcast, millions of people watched Victor Cruz get the tongue-lashing of the preseason from Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride while coming off the field the other night.

Though at least his mother, Blanca, missed it.

“Luckily she was at the game and not watching it, so she didn’t see that,” the Giants’ second-year wide receiver from Paterson said Thursday. “But it’s just part of the game. If you know Coach Gilbride, if he doesn’t yell at you, that means he doesn’t love you.

“When he’s yelling, he expects the best out of you. He wants you to correct your mistake, correct it quick and move on to the next play.”

Cruz has a point: Maybe a good berating is a positive sign — provided it doesn’t happen too often.

After all, it’s an indication the team has high expectations for him and needs him to clean up the smallest of details. So while it was fun for Cruz to be playing on instinct while catching three touchdowns against the Jets last preseason and receiving tons of praise from Gilbride and head coach Tom Coughlin, the Giants need him to step up now because there’s a void at slot receiver created by the loss of Steve Smith.

Competing with Domenik Hixon and a few others to be the team’s third receiver means the number of steps, not just the amount of touchdowns, will be scrutinized.

“It wasn’t that he ran the wrong route, it was the details and how the route needs to be run and the depth it needs to be run at,” Coughlin said when asked what Cruz did wrong against the Chicago Bears. “It’s a constant sense of urgency in not only what you think you’re supposed to do but how you are supposed to do it, how you’re supposed to adjust it.

“And it’s just not for him, it’s for everybody, not just Victor. The specifics, the details, the absolute part of it so that there is no hesitation on the part of the quarterback.”

The quarterback is Eli Manning, who gave Cruz an encouraging pat on the chest as Gilbride was laying into the former undrafted receiver from UMass.

Still, the comfort level for Manning went down a bunch when he lost Smith and tight end Kevin Boss, the two players who most consistently worked the middle of the field for the Giants’ offense the past two years. The team is hoping tight end Travis Beckum can help fill Boss’ role, but there’s still the matter of finding a receiver to work inside.

Mario Manningham might wind up bumping inside to play that role, but he’s been bumped from “X” (split end) to “Z” (flanker) and now “Y” (slot), so the learning curve might be a bit steep. In short, the door is open for Cruz to secure some playing time — if he can learn to mock Smith by being as precise as he was in his route-running.

“I kind of watch him (on film) and the things he’s done,” Cruz said, “how he read coverages and how he would respond to different coverages, whether it be man or zone, and I just kind of try to take bits and pieces of his game and add it to mine.”

So far this preseason, Cruz has only four catches for 50 yards, though he had a 21-yard leaping grab on a fourth down against Chicago. That’s not quite Smith production; heck, that’s not Cruz production as far as preseason standards go.

Though maybe that’s about to change Saturday against the team he torched in last year’s preseason opener, beginning with a 64-yard touchdown on his first professional snap.

“I haven’t watched it in a long time, to be honest with you,” Cruz said of last year’s Jets game. “I just remember having butterflies in my stomach and going out there not knowing what to expect, not knowing the speed of the game and to have that first play from scrimmage go down like that. It was a surreal moment and the rest was me playing off instinct.

“My confidence level was pretty high. I was just going out and playing. It felt good.”

As would a high-five from Gilbride coming off the field. Perhaps he’ll get it next time if he runs up the field to create room for Manningham to cut underneath him, as he was supposed to do on Monday.

“I got a whole bunch of calls: ‘What was he yelling at you about?’ I was like, ‘You don’t want to know,’ ” Cruz said. “It was a learning curve for me and I improved it on the next play.”